Summer Movie Pandemonium, 2015

      I can relate to the Summer Box Office schedule. It's always busy, very jammed & it can be wearying. It's been a long time since I wrote something (Day & Night jobs have me in a jam, at the moment) and, so I figured, I'd be irresponsible, if I didn't discuss the summer films for 2015. Sure, I could've saved my money on something more, alas, this is my 'something more'. Originally, I'd plan on talking about each movie, separately, which is normally how I review movies, but with work obligations catching up with blogging, It was difficult to make both worlds meet in a proper fashion. So, here, I'll write an overview of the movies that I saw this summer to recap this segment of the year. A quick review of each film, sort of.

     By my count, I've watched 16 movies during the May-August section of the movie year, easily my highest mark as a movie buff during this time of year. 4 of those, I've watched at least 2 times or more (Avengers 2, M:I 5, Mad Max 4, & Ant-man). The only thing that I'm disappointed by, is that I didn't see more to increase that number. I didn't get to see Minions or Inside Out to build on that number (And, I work a lot of hours just to see these films late at night, sometimes). At the same time, when you work on building something you love doing, you have to push yourself to the highest of limits just to accomplish seemingly impossible odds. Hopefully, because of that, I can get back into the flow of this. The following list is done in no particular order, but if you must know my favorite movie of the summer? It was, indeed, Avengers 2. 

The Best

Avengers: Age of Ultron: My favorite moment about Avengers 2, was never getting sucked into the expectations made by the fans or media. Surely, I have many moments when I was Awed by what I was witnessing from Ultron, The Maximoff's, Vision or the team, itself; but when you hide expectations from yourself, expecting everything to come forth, is when I felt, Age of Ultron met just about every single expectation. Will these moments top the ones from the first? Depends on how you expect things to go. Sometimes, the best ways to go into movies, is to not have a bloated vision of what to expect, just let it play out. My only regret? I never got to see it in theaters in the same month for a 4th time. Not because I got tired of my experience with the spectacle, but I had car trouble, which prevented me from seeing it a 4th time.  

Mad Max: Fury Road: George Miller went through many hurdles towards getting this film made, suffering through Mel Gibson's issues, The US dollar collapsing with Australia's dollar, 9/11, reshoots, etc. Survived even Tom Hardy getting frustrated with Miller, at one point, with the 450 hours of footage shot. Basically, Fury Road is the movie equivalent to Jak X, except there are no power-ups or ottsels roaming the screen. There are little plot cues in the film, since everything, literally keeps moving. Tom Hardy does a great job at recapturing Gibson's version of Max Rockatansky from mannerisms & body language, while Charlize Theron is commanding as Furiosa. It helped having seen the first three to get a background as to what I was going to encounter. It was pure excellence, to say the least.

 Dope: One of the most important films of 2015.  

 Mission: Impossible-Rogue Nation: Tom Cruise might as well start going all Death Wish on these films, soon enough. Rebecca Ferguson is a worthy edition to this installment.

 Amy: Director Asif Kapadia outdid himself with this film after his documentary on Ayrton Senna. I don't think anyone can structure a documentary like he does. I knew Amy Winehouse was damaged, but, yeah; she went through it.

Ant-Man: Oh snap, Marvel can do heist films, too? Yup, loved it.

Straight Outta Compton: Could've been a prolific biopic. As a movie, though, it's a great time.

The Surprises

Jurassic World: Only thing better that would've been better than Bryce Dallas Howard's light blue heels, is if they came with a turbo thrusters option. 

The Man from U.N.C.L.E: Straight Outta Compton jacked this film from making more money than it should have. Wish it got more notoriety, but, ya know, bad break.

Trainwreck: Truly a Judd Apatow film, but one that doesn't go hard for being more than what it should be, which is a good thing. 

The D Train: A Jack Black/James Marsden flick that was truly forgotten. Came out the same month as Age of Ultron did. 

Vacation: Ed Helms accomplished his one goal: Don't be like Vegas Vacation. 

The Doldrums

Tomorrowland: The dullest $200 million dollar film of all-time. Even duller than Superman Returns

Fantastic Four (2015 reboot): Felt like my rating of this film kept dropping every day. That entire cast has my deepest sympathies. 

Mistress America: Didn't necessarily hate it, I just couldn't vibe with it. 

No Escape: If Owen Wilson is your lead in a action/drama movie and he's his comedic self in it? You're just trying too hard.